Category: Christmas

Things To Think About When Buying Gifts For A Servicemember

Supporting The Troops This Holiday

It’s crunch time for anyone still buying Christmas gifts. The stores are running their best sales. The television is bombarding you with ads. Your relatives are making panicky phone calls to ask if you have any idea what your spouse wants for Christmas. The anxiety of those phone calls is making you forget everything you know about your spouse. It’s the most wonderful time of the year. And if you’re planning a gift for the servicemember in your life, you might want just a little bit of help to know what to send. Here is some wisdom to get you started.

Location, Location, Location

If you want to know what to buy a soldier, the first question to ask is where that soldier is stationed. A soldier who is deployed, or a sailor who is at sea, will likely be desperate for things that remind them of home. Things like their favorite candies, or their favorite soda are sure to be a hit. If they’re stationed in a stateside base, however, they’re likely able to just go buy their own. Likewise, to someone stationed in Alaska, snow supplies would be great. To someone in the Mojave desert, they probably just need a normal coat. Know where you’re sending gifts too.

Expect Delays

Breaking the fourth wall for a minute: I served six years in the military. In that time frame, I received mail at six bases spread across three continents with entirely different postal services and mail delivery processes. And in six years, I didn’t ever send or receive a package that wasn’t delayed, and I never heard of anyone who didn’t have the exact same experience. I don’t know why military delivery is delayed so often. It probably has something to do with security. But I can tell you as a fact that your expectation should be that your care package will get there when it gets there.

Service Members Are Still People

This one is the kind of thing that is something that most people know intellectually but tend to forget about when they’re actually planning a care package for a soldier. Most soldiers are men and women in their early twenties. It’s perfectly fine, useful even, to shop for them as such. For example, buying a 19-year-old boy the hottest video game is likely to be a huge hit. The military demands a different style than the civilian world, but not so terribly different that 19-year-olds aren’t fundamentally children who pay their own taxes.

You Can Never Go Wrong With Snacks

This bit of advice is useful, no matter who you’re shopping for. Everyone loves snacks. Everyone. Sending a servicemember a care package full of their favorite snacks, for example, My Hero Crate’s Military Snack Care Package, are guaranteed to be a hit. When all else fails, go with snacks.

Give Them A Break

If a service member can’t come home for the holidays, it’s almost certainly because they haven’t had time to take a break. So if they don’t have time to take a break, send the break to them. My Hero Crat5e has care packages tailored to both men and women to help them take a little time for themselves. Knowing that the people back home care about their well-being when they can’t make it home will mean the world to them.

 

And from all of us here at My Hero Crate, have a very Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year.

Getting Ready For Your Service Member’s Homecoming

Holiday Leave Is Coming Up

Holiday leave. There is no more perfect combination of words in a soldier’s vocabulary. During the month of December, most military bases offer “block leave” opportunities, where entire weeks are marked off in the calendar for service members to visit home. Right around now, thousands of men and women in uniform are turning in their official leave requests and getting ready for a trip home. Here are some important things to keep in mind if you’re expecting a visit from a service member in your life over the holidays.

#1 – Leave is a Complicated Process

Imagine all the difficulties of planning a trip somewhere far away. Keep in mind all of the packing. Finding an affordable flight, or a safe driving route. Figuring out where you’re going to be staying. And so on, and so on. Whatever you’re imagining, go ahead and assume an extra four or five challenges have to be dealt with before holiday leave is even approved, let alone before your soldier can come home to you. And keep in mind that the army runs on paperwork. Every single step in the travel process doesn’t just need to be figured out, it needs to be documented. This leads to the next point.

#2 – Seeing You Took A Lot of Work

Picking someone up from an airport, especially if you don’t live particularly close to the airport, is never fun. And knowing that someone who you missed all year is in town and isn’t making the effort to come see you is frustrating. You have to keep in mind that it likely took weeks of work for a service member to see you. And a lot of that work had to be done during a soldier’s extremely limited free time. A single day driving to the airport or clearing time in your schedule to go to the place the visiting service member is staying is not that big of an ask. And if you haven’t seen them since they left for basic training, bear something else in mind.

#3 – The Military Changes People

The service member who comes home for a visit might not behave the same way as you’re used to. This can lead to a lot of tension between service members and their loved ones back home. The fact that many soldiers are under the age of 25 heightens that dramatically. You won’t get to be around to see them changing, and it might catch you off guard. Be sure to keep in mind that, even if they’ve changed, they are still fundamentally the person you love and were excited to have come home for holiday leave.

#4 – Not Everyone Gets to Go Home

Although the military does make an effort to let service members go home for the holiday, sometimes it just isn’t possible. There could be any number of reasons. They could be deployed somewhere where they are needed in December. Paperwork snafus can happen. They might not have enough leave days or money saved up. When that happens, your soldier is probably at least as bummed about it as you are, if not more. Why not show them you care over the holiday with one of My Hero Crate’s Care Packages? Our Christmas Gift Set is a perfect way to let your veteran know that you’re thinking of them and want to wish them a very Merry Christmas.

 

Whether you are seeing your family this year, or are stuck on base, all of us at My Hero Crate would like to wish our men and women in uniform a Happy Holiday.

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